During more than a century our government has been
engaged in the alienation of an enormous domain. On a scale unequaled in
history, and which probably never will be equaled, we have distributed land in
generous homesteads to the land‑hungry of the world, transforming a
tenant peasantry into a responsible electorate. In the pursuit of this business
we have enlarged a simple policy of dispersal until the public domain has
become a public grab‑bag; and pleading for the more rapid and profitable
"development" of what we chose to call the unlimited resources of
America, we have developed, instead, a national recklessness, spendthriftness,
and wasteful extravagance, in which we have thrown away everything but the very
richest part of our takings. The public land and the public water, in the form
of fuel, power, timber, navigable streams, irrigable plains, and valuable
minerals, have been so administered as to beget both a confidence in the
eternal bounty of nature and a habit of treating public property as a source of
private fortune.

To‑day, a number of things coming
simultaneously to our attention call a halt. Our timber resources, sufficient,
if not radically conserved, for barely a score of years; our rivers suffering
from deforestation; our decreasing waterpowers falling into the hands of an
increasing monopoly; our mineral fuels becoming more costly to mine, and
amazingly less abundant; our farm lands losing millions of tons of their most
fertile portions by soil wash,—all these things, and many more, bring
us face to face with the certainty that this policy of spendthrift alienation
and waste must be abandoned, and that its direct converse, the utmost
conservation of our remaining natural resources, public private, must be
adopted. More: it must be adhered to rigidly, not only to preserve a livable
land for our children's children, but even to assure a modicum of prosperity
for our own old age.

It is to bring this fact most startlingly to the general
notice that President Roosevelt has called upon the governors of all the states
and territories to meet him in conference at the White House during the present
month (May), to consult and confer, not only with but with one another, and to
set on foot a movement for the adoption of uniform legislation over the whole
country at an early date. This is to be not only an unusual but a precedent‑making
conference, since it is the first time the Chief Executive has called into
consultation the coordinate officials of the states; but its importance from
this point of view, great though it is, appears but slight beside the
significance of the policy which it brings to public notice.

It is essential that we should get very clearly in
mind at the outset precisely what this new policy is intended to effect. Its
inception has been so promptly followed by the withdrawal from entry of the
fuel lands remaining in the public domain, and the establishment of large
forest reserves, and the opposition of the executive authority to any further
development of water‑power by private interests on navigable streams or on
public lands, that many persons have supposed that conservation was the
opposite of alienation, and have imagined that President Roosevelt's plan was
to hold all remaining public property in common and develop it on a more or
less socialistic basis. Nothing could be further from the truth. The resources
which are to be conserved are natural, not national. He plans to direct the
organization of public sentiment, and the formulation of laws by which all such
resources, whether in land or in water, whether national, state, or privately
owned, shall be administered in a way to preserve intact or to increase the
principal of them, and to give to each succeeding generation a larger wealth
from the interest.

In the consideration of this proposition two
questions immediately arise: first, what are these resources and how are they
to be conserved? second, how can the states and the federal government
cooperate to attain this result? Leaving the first of these for the moment and
considering the second, the immediate motive of the present conference, we find
an attempt to solve by a master stroke a problem for which no solution is
provided in our form of government: that of bringing about parallel legislation
in several states at the same time. Our government is organized from the point
of view of the individual states, and it is so made up that both the people of
these states as individuals, and the states themselves as governing entities,
may have effective influence in shaping national legislation at Washington.
There is nothing whatever of a reciprocal nature whereby the whole nation may
either force, impel, or request a single state to legislate in a manner common
to all. Any movement toward such interference within a state would be considered
such an infringement of the rights of the states as might possibly plunge us
again into the abyss of civil war. The tendency of the present administration
toward centralization is well known; yet even the President would hesitate to
attempt to bring about his purpose by other means than those which he has
adopted. Yet these means, "spectacular" as one governor has called them,
appear before trial to offer a happy means of bringing about co‑legislation
without infringing upon the dignity of any member of the Union. Calling the
Democratic South and the Republican North into a common conference has become
necessary, too, just because of their political difference; for any measure
which might be brought to the notice of their respective congressmen would
obtain favor or disregard according as the congressmen were with or against the
party of the President.

The immediate purpose is to bring about three sorts
of legislation: that which controls national resources, that which controls
state resources, and that which directs the development of resources privately
controlled. In this the cooperation of the states is not only desirable, it is
absolutely essential. The federal authorities may enact laws for the
maintenance and development of the public domain, both in land and in water;
they may enter into partnerships, and do so enter, for the improvement of
navigation and power in navigable streams and for carrying on irrigation; they
may acquire land and establish reservoirs where such reservoirs can be shown to
be necessary for the purpose of maintaining navigation; they, may shape the
methods of taking fuel from the public land by inserting their requirements in
the lease or deed under which the land is partially alienated. In addition,
they may carry on a campaign of education aimed to persuade individuals to
adopt rational methods. But a state can go much farther. It may buy land and
plant forests without regard to the purpose for which the forest is
established. It may drain local swamps. It may create reservoirs on small and
insignificant streams, for the purpose of providing a town water‑supply,
of improving water‑power, or for any reason whatever. It may enter into
partnership, with its citizens and cooperate with them in forest development,
in guarding against fires, in the erection of dams, in the management of mines,
in any way it may choose. It may exercise its police power to provide that
those who own private forests must police them, must cut fire‑breaks,
must burn their slashings, and may not cut to exceed the increment in any year.
It may encourage tree‑planting by direct legislation and by passing taxes
on wooded lands. It may by law put land in escrow during the carrying out of
large improvements; and it may even direct the economy of fuel at the furnace.

In the White House conference, therefore, President
Roosevelt, who will himself preside, will present to the governors a number of
expert investigators and engineers who will tell them of the need and of the
proper method of obtaining the necessary reforms. Deliberation upon these
things, and the bringing together of the governors upon a definite purpose,
will bring about mutual understanding and intelligence. Committees will be
appointed to consider the requisite legislation and the possibilities of action
in the several states, and the governors, or those of them who are so disposed,
will present these measures for the consideration of their legislatures. How
successful this will be it would be idle to prophesy; but it is certain that in
the present temper of the country the several executives, stirred by the
emphasis with which the President is accustomed to debate this subject, will
obtain a modicum of what is desired.

Though it might at first alarm those who fear
centralization, and appear to be a curious reversal of government plans, it
would be in many ways a source of benefit if this conference should prove to be
the forerunner of annual gatherings of our executives, or perhaps of annual or
biennial interstate meetings of legislators, in which common local legislation
on such other subjects as incorporation, railway regulation, and the conduct of
those affairs which affect other than individual states, might be discussed.

Returning to the first question, the manner of
conservation, we find that all these resources are so closely allied that any
scheme for their final development must consider all of them, and in many
relations. Thus the forest cover must be used to aid in reservoiring streams
for navigation, for irrigation, and for water‑power; the improvement of
the range and the regulation of grazing must go hand in hand with free‑planting
and farm improvement to prevent soil wash; the development of water‑power
by the forests and by the creation of storage basins must be connected with any
movement to conserve our fuel supply.

The forests now standing in the United States and
Alaska aggregate probably 500,000,000 acres, of which something more than one‑fifth
— probably about one‑fourth— is in national
reserves, and a few million acres more in state reserves. Much of this, and
especially of the national reserve, is extremely thin forest, being more used
for or suited to grazing than tree—growing; and there are large barren
areas in it. A large part of the unreserved forest is in Alaska. At the present
rate of cutting and of growth, these forests are not sufficient for a score of
years. That is to say, there will be forests standing longer than that, but the
shortage in many kinds of timber will before then become more acute than is now
the case with white pine; and only the importation of large supplies duty‑free
from Canada, Siberia, and Mexico can tide us over until our new methods have
been given years for their effect.

When the cutting up of the public domain began, a
century ago, the lands so cut, as well as large parts of the original states,
contained the most abundant forests then standing in the temperate zone. To
illustrate what their destruction has been, and how needless, it is only
necessary to consider the pine forests about the Great Lakes. There were in
that region sixty years ago upward of 350,000,000,000 board feet of white pine
lumber, standing in almost continuous forests over northern Michigan, northern
Wisconsin, and a good half of Minnesota. The cutting of this timber began in a
small way, a few million feet a year. Gradually this increased until it reached
three, and even four billion, and then swept upward with a rush, to aggregate
nearly 8,000,000,000 in a year. Then as the forests gave out it dropped, until
to‑day, it is less than 3,000,000,000 feet a year, at which rate the end is
fast approaching.

Although many of the trees which made up that big
forest were several hundred years old, and several feet in diameter, the white
pine reaches its profitable growth there in eighty years, at which time it is
from twelve to fifteen inches in diameter breast‑high, and produces
18,000 feet of boards to the acre. Had the woodsmen who cut over the first pine
forests done so in a sensible manner, had they burned their slashings so as to
save the woods from fire, and had they left a few trees to the acre for seed,
we would now have great tracts of new growth well along toward maturity. But
they did no such thing. In fact, the history of our country contains no such
tale of devastation as that which they wrought. Sherman's army, sweeping across
Georgia, did nothing to equal it.

Cutting with mad haste through the heart of the big
timber, they left the broken trees, the culls and the slashings where they lay,
to become the source of cyclones of fire which, driven by the wind, swept mile
after mile in advance of the timbermen, destroying in a week more forest than
would have been cut in a year. More than the trees themselves, the soil, slow
accumulation of ages, together with the possibility of reseeding, all were
burned. So terrific were these fires that navigation was interfered with by the
smoke two hundred miles away; and across the northern peninsula to‑day
reach barren stretches of sandy waste, scarred by blackened stumps or tangled
with fallen and wasted trees. As if these accidental fires were not enough, the
lumbermen rushed their men and their machinery to turn out and market only the
very best lumber. So cheap did they consider their product that nothing else
could be sold. Whatever seemed too poor to be carried to market was dumped,
with the sawdust and shavings, the slabs and the bark, into gigantic furnaces,—
waste‑burners,— the smoke from a score of which poured up night and day
beside the tiniest of the little harbors on the Lakes. The timber that was
burned in those insatiate maws, the bark and slabs that went into them, would
to‑day more than duplicate the fortunes of the forest pirates, had they
been saved for the still and the box—factory.

As the forests were cut and the forest cover burned,
the sandy regions of the pine woods began to suffer from soil wash. The rivers
were filled with bars, the land gullied, and the fertile top‑soil, or as much
as the fire had left, was washed away into the larger waters. The damage was
immense, the loss irretrievable. The forests which should have enriched the
state possessing them, and have supplied the nation for all time to come, were
slaughtered unmercifully by men whose only object was to get their money out at
the earliest possible moment, without regard to what might follow. And as with
white pine, so with other woods. The yellow pine of the south and the hardwoods
are now following, and the famine in hickory is upon us.

Yet this state of affairs is easily remedied.
Germany, a century ago, faced just such a situation as now confronts us. Then
there began the work which we must now undertake. New forests were planted,
wherever the land was unsuited for other purposes. This planting was done year
after year, so that each year a new tract would come to maturity. Forest
wardens watched for fires, and laws forbade careless hunters setting fires in
the woods. Timbermen were forced to gather and burn what twigs from the
slashings could not be used in the still or burned for charcoal, and broad
lanes were left through the forests as stops for fires. In this way there arose
those magnificent German forests which now return the empire an average net
annual profit of two dollars and a half for each acre, on land which is
otherwise unusable; and, besides, give their services free for the storage of
water and for the retention of the soil.

In our own land something of this sort has already
been done. New York has nearly two million acres of land in forest reserves
which are being carefully tended. Pennsylvania has half as much. Minnesota is
already securing considerable profit from the management of its white pine
reserves and is seeding down large areas; and the other lake states are also
moving; but all this is being done slowly, and lacks much of the energy and the
cooperation which should accompany it.

We cut at present about 17,000,000,000 cubic feet of
wood for all purposes —‑ ties, cooperage, lumber, firewood, pulp,
shingles, mine‑timber, all included. An acre of average forest land in a
wild state increases about ten cubic feet of wood a year; an acre properly
conserved and managed according to the best methods of modern forestry
increases from forty to seventy, and in Saxony even ninety cubic feet a year.
If the average under conservation be forty cubic feet, the existing half‑billion
acres well tended would be just sufficient for our present needs. But much of
this is unavailable, much of it is of poor wood. Before another generation has
passed away we shall need double that area; and it must be located in every
state of the union. It must be planted under laws which will release the taxes
upon planted land, assessing a timber crop but once, on its valuation at
maturity; under laws which will require that for every tree cut down a new one
be planted; and under laws which will make for fires impossible.

One of the first effects of thorough tree‑planting
will be the reduction of soil wash. This constant theft of our fertile layer is
heaviest in the Missouri valley. Humphrey and Abbott, who are always to be
believed, estimated that the Mississippi— receiving most of it
from the Missouri— carried out to sea every year enough earth to
make a prism a mile square and more than three hundred feet high. Most of this
comes from the Bad Lands, and from the Yellowstone River. The barren Bad Lands,
washed by the rain, sweep into the larger rivers to make bars and to give rise
to many problems for the engineer. Irrigation of the lands along the river by
the use of storage‑reservoirs, pumping‑stations, and canals will do
much to prevent this; but the forestation of the banks of streams will do even
more.

One of the greatest of American resources is the
western range. Decades ago the succulent grasses supported millions of buffalo,
and later millions of cattle; but as the farmers pushed westward the herds
retreated to the shortgrass country, where they roamed at large upon the public
domain, their owners paying no charge for their feed. This happy, free‑for‑all
state of affairs could have but one ending. The rush to get something for
nothing crowded the ranges till the grass was eaten and trampled out. Cattle
were followed by sheep which ate the very roots of the grass; and at last
thousands of acres were deprived of the last sign of herbage and turned over
into sage‑brush desert. Here again was a loss which all the country felt,
not alone because of the loss of cheap cattle‑food, but most of all
because the soil was now as free to wash away as in the deforested lands; the
barren surface did not retain the rains; the rivers rose higher in flood and
fell lower in dry seasons; and there began to manifest themselves the signs of
desert country.

For its proper conservation great areas of the range
must be re‑seeded and kept from the cattle until the grasses have made a
fresh start and have choked out the sage‑brush. Then it must be grazed
under lease, for at least a nominal rent, so that every tract may be controlled
and supervised and the supervision paid for by the cattle‑owners. This
must be so arranged as to prevent overstocking, and the number of cattle to a
given area must be prescribed. These methods are so simple that it would appear
that a child would appreciate them; yet the simple statement of them is enough
to arouse the old cattlemen to anger; and to obtain the passage of such laws in
western states in cooperation with the government will prove difficult. This
difficulty is, in a measure, lessened, however, by a recent court decision
holding that the cattle—owner, and not the federal authorities, is
responsible if cattle enter unfenced public domain.

Like the range, the lands suitable for irrigation add
another to the problems. Their improvement is already well advanced under the
direction of the Reclamation Service, and several million acres either already
have been or are about to be furnished with water. Under the new laws these
lands are divided into small tracts for individual farmers, and the full
benefit to the nation of the responsible land‑owning electorate is being
obtained, at the same time that the soil is being retained in place and
developed. The swamp lands offer a question more immediately for the states to
solve. Most of these lands, which are spread over a very large area, and
aggregate more than 75,000,000 acres, were originally given by the federal
government to the states, to be sold to create a fund for their own drainage.
This has never been done, except in the lower Mississippi valley, where levee
systems have been erected and the lands thus drained have been found to be
enormously fertile. Min‑nesota is now engaged on a heroic task of drainage,
and has withdrawn from sale much of its undrained land because it can be sold
at a much higher rate when drained, and gives a considerable profit to the
state. Swamps often lie in more than one state, however, and the outfall stream
often runs through a different state from that in which the swamp lies, so that
cooperation or federal direction becomes necessary.

Our mineral fuel supply, the remaining
"land" element in the natural resources of the country, is at present
being exhausted at the rate of 400,000,000 tons a year; at which rate it will
not be a generation before it will become an economical problem how to supply
cheaply some parts of the country. Large and unexploited areas of bituminous
coal still remain in the public domain in the western states, and these have
been withdrawn from entry by the President until such time as the existing
frauds could be stopped and the laws so modified as to enable him to force the
conservative use of these fuels. There are also large areas of lignite, this
softer coal cropping out in many places and in thick veins on nearly every
tributary of the Missouri in North Dakota and on the Big Muddy itself. It is in
these lignite fields that the government has taken the most active steps toward
the proper conservation of fuel, in developing the mine's central power‑station.
As the transportation of coal is costly, and as it deteriorates badly in shipping,
there is a great deal of the cheapest grade which it does not pay to ship from
the mine, and which yet contains a considerable source of power. It has always
been a matter of prophecy by electrical engineers that in the future power‑stations
would be erected at the shaft, and power, not fuel, shipped about the country.
To test the value of this system and give a working basis for computation, the
government has installed a mine‑central station at the side of a lignite
mine on the upper Missouri. There power is generated, which is distributed to
moto‑pumps, some of them forty or fifty miles away. These pumps elevate
the water of the river to high‑level canals, eighty feet or more above
the river surface, whence it successively irrigates the lower levels. The plan
has been found economical, and there is no doubt that a great saving will be
made eventually in this way. The mine‑central of the Buford‑Trenton
project contains another new development, or rather a somewhat novel factor, in
a gas‑producer, consuming lignite coal. Experiments with producers and
internal combustion engines show that the present average expenditure of two
pounds of coal per horse‑power hour can be decreased to a horse‑power
hour for each pound of coal consumed; which, if generally followed, would
double the duration of our coal supply. In addition, the producer will make gas
from the dust and slack in the waste heaps, so that there remains a vast source
of power in these unshippable materials.

Such developments as these, together with methods of
mining less wasteful than now practiced, will not only go far to conserve our
fuel supply but will lighten the congesting burden of our railways. There is a
third factor to be considered, however, in the water‑power from our
running streams. And this brings us to consider the other types of resource,
those which lie in running water.

Though the administration has been extremely agitated
by the threatening approach of a timber famine, there is probably no other
element in this new conservation policy which has so stirred it as the fear of
a monopolization of the water‑powers of the country. Not a day goes by which
does not bring to light the activity of some big corporation to secure rights
in a public stream. Bills are now pending in Congress giving to such concerns
rights in perpetuity, without any return whatsoever, in public streams, and
depriving the government of the power to benefit from any of the improvement by
forestation or river improvement. Sites for dams are being surveyed, and there
is indication of a race to secure "vested" rights in order that
capital may fatten on the results of the public work. Already large
corporations have combined their holdings into larger corporations; and it is
not hard to imagine a single concern, like the Steel Company, in complete
possession of our natural powers and able to utilize and direct them as it
will.

It is because of the extreme importance of this
feature of our situation, and the general tendency to ignore it, that I have chosen
to present here the stories of two typical streams, developed, one under the
old give‑away policy, the other under the new policy of conservation in
the highest degree to which it has yet been carried. These are the upper
Mississippi and the Wisconsin. The upper Mississippi heads in Minnesota in
level plateau, rock‑rimmed, full of lakes and ponds and containing
several million acres of swamps, generally heavily wooded. The stream for about
five hundred miles after leaving Itasca flows alternately through still deep
reaches and over abrupt rapids and falls, culminating at St. Anthony's and in
the rapid water between that point and the mouth of the Minnesota River. Any
comprehensive plan for the development of this stream should take into
consideration the maintenance and well‑being of the forests, first for
timber supply and second for the retention of a forest cover to aid in storage
of water; the drainage of the swamp area, so that better forests might grow on
some of it and the rest be used for agriculture; the enlargement of the lakes,
and ponds, so as to provide storage of the snow and flood‑waters during
high months; and the release of the stored' waters during the low season, so as
to obtain the greatest benefit to navigation: and at the same time to water‑power
Any private concern undertaking this work— and it would be futile
to deny that the government should in such activities approximate the economies
of a corporation for profit— would first have obtained the cooperation
of the owners of water‑powers, or would have bought them out altogether.
Then it would have called upon states and individuals to cooperate in the
control of the forests, or would have bought and managed for itself these
timber tracts as far as possible. Then, as it developed its storage reservoirs,
it would have placed them so that the greatest amount possible should be
discharged at low water from the highest point upstream— so that all
the falls should have the benefit of it. The progress of the work thereafter
would have involved straightening and improving the stream and its approaches
in order to bring about simplicity in the drainage problems— the
whole aim being to prevent an excess of water where and when it was not wanted,
and to direct an abundance where it was wanted.

The government began the care of this region at the
close of the Civil War, at a time when practically every dam site was still
held in federal or Indian fee, and when almost or quite all of these woods were under government ownership except
the swamp tracts which had by law been transferred to the state. In the
development of the river no interest what ever except navigation has been
considered, and that navigation below the falls. Accordingly, .the reservoirs
have been placed at points where they would discharge above St. Anthony's
without regard for their effect upon the several powers above; and during the
progress of the reservoiring the mill sites and the forests have been steadily
alienated without regard to sharing the cost of improvements. There exist now
almost innumerable privileges granted without cost by Congress for dams across
the upper Mississippi, many of these dams being in actual operation. The
government has provided 2,000,000 acre‑feet of storage,—
90,000,000,000 cubic feet,— from which the water is released at
low water to maintain an increased flow of 1000 cubic second feet over the
falls of St. Anthony, and an added depth of one foot at St. Paul at low water.
All this has been done at government expense, and solely with attention to the
reservoirs. Every dam site on the upper river owes its value to the government
pondage above it, and commands value according to the proportion of pondage
above and below, because it is peculiarly this pondage which gives value at the
busy low‑water season. Yet not one cent of the cost of the work has come on the
mill‑owners; these mill‑owners have themselves steadily cut off the
forests and reduced the value of the storage, cutting the lumber by government
power; they are now continually complaining because all the water is not
released above them; and the State of Minnesota, having the swamp lands to
drain, is in a quandary as to how to go about the development of a river
already in government hands in order to attain drainage channels to and through
it. The falls of St. Anthony, always a valuable power, have been nearly doubled
in value by government storage, and powers immediately above this fall,
aggregating 100,000 horse‑power, have been acquired by a thrifty
individual who is preparing to bond the value of the federal pondage and sell
electricity at Minneapolis. Not one cent has been repaid to the government for
its addition to these private fortunes,— given away free
originally by the government,— and neither state, nation, nor individual
has yet obtained the highest good which can be obtained by proper forestation,
reservoiring, and drainage of the headwaters country.

Exactly the opposite policy is now being developed
upon the Wisconsin, a river which in its early days was easily navigable during
most of the year, but which with the rapid destruction of the forests became so
unreliable, so subject to extreme changes, that it was abandoned by the
government engineers and pronounced unnavigable. Millions of dollars spent in
connection with its development return not one cent of interest to the people.
This river heads with the Menominee and some other streams in a mountainous
region on the northern, Michigan, border; and there,— for his
purposes the strategic centre of the state systems,— the
forester, Mr. Griffiths, has chosen to make his principal campaign. He has
begun the establishment of a forest reserve which is expected to reach a total
of 8,000,000 acres, and of which a tenth is already in possession of the state.
Whatever lands suitable for agriculture the state owns, or whatever isolated
forest tracts not suitable for reserve, he is selling at high market prices to
buy up the remaining cheap, rocky, mountain lands of the proposed forest
reserve.

It is inevitable that this reforesting will have a
great effect upon the rivers which drain it. During all its upper course, as
far down as Kilbourne, the Wisconsin plunges over fall after fall, creating
water‑power which is of especial value because there is no fuel in or
near the state. These powers, which are drowned out now in freshets and almost
idle at low water, are depended upon to drive the rapidly growing manufactories
of the state, just as the forest—reserve timber must eventually be relied
upon to supply the high‑grade lumber for these manufactories. Some time
ago the power owners— that is, following the old idea that
whoever owns the land beside a waterfall owns the right to use the power of the
running water ‑ began to agitate and at last presented a bill which
enabled them to enter upon the forest reserve, impound water, and do as they
pleased with state property for the benefit of their private powers. This was
opposed by the forester, supported by the enlightened sentiment which Mr.
Roosevelt's new policy embodies. As a result there was eventually passed a
cooperative bill which provides in large measure for all the interests
involved. The forester is empowered to indicate what lakes and ponds can be
used for storage, to designate the location of the controlling dam, and to
establish, with his surveyors, stone monuments marking the level to which the
impounded waters may be raised without injury to the forests, is also given the
state railway commissioners to appoint engineers who shall compute, from a
careful survey, drainage area from which every power site collects its water,
the amount of flow now in every week of the year, and the horse‑power
developed or capable of development. The power owners are authorized to
incorporate as the Wiseo River Valley Improvement Association and to issue
bonds for the purpose of obtaining money with which to establish the dams
designated by the forester, and to operate the storage system. These bonds are,
if memory serves me, guaranteed by the state. At any rate the law carefully safeguards
the control of the corporation, to prevent monopolization.

The dams being installed, the railway commissioners
are required to examine each power each year, and to determine the total and
the proportionate amount of betterment; from which the owner has a right of
appeal. Upon their findings the commissioners then determine amount to be paid
by each power owner that year toward the interest and sinking fund of the bonds
and toward the maintenance of the somewhat elaborate system necessary for operation.

As a result of all this activity, of course, the
Wisconsin will again become navigable river. Some years ago the government
engineers examined the stream, selected reservoir sites, and made a report upon
the feasibility of storing water and thus aiding navigation. But by the
reversed process now in operation navigation obtains its full flow—
needing only the channel work to complete it; the forest interests of the state
are conserved; the greatest possible power is obtained; the private as well as the
public interests are all safeguarded, and the whole cost is to be paid by a
small proportion of the betterments received by individuals. This is
conservation of resources in a high degree, and I have gone into it at length
because it is almost the only instance of this magnitude which one can quote.

It is just such a plan which is in the minds of those
who are advocating the establishment of the Appalachian forest reserve—
for which a bill may have passed before this appears in print. In the Appalachian
forests there head some of our most important rivers: the Tennessee and the
Cumberland, already navigable; the Big Sandy, the Tombigbee, the Catawba, the
Neuse, Peedee, Santee, Coosa, and many, many more. The estimated horse‑power
of these streams is, all told, about 5,000,000, of which three‑fifths is
capable of easy developinent. With the reduction of the forests, however, this
waterfiow becomes even more capricious than on northern streams, and the value
is made very small. Three million continuous horsepower represent the
consumption by present methods of more than 26,000,000 tons of coal a year, or
one‑sixteenth of our total fuel consumption; and as the increase in water‑power
economy may be expected to keep pace with coal economy, this proportion may be
considered a fairly stable one. That is, an amount of power equal to one‑sixteenth
of our total coal consumption ‑ including steamships, railways, and
dwellings, as well as factories ‑is in jeopardy through the cutting of
the forests on the southern mountains.

The question has many other sides. Thus the Tennessee
River, already navigable after a fashion, is interrupted by a long series of
rapids and falls in northern Alabama and by swift water near Chattanooga. A
power company owning the bank, and therefore claiming the running water,
offered to allow the government t erect f or it a dam across the river below
Chattanooga and put in a lock, from which the power company would furnish power
to operate the lock. Even the final settlement, by which the company builds the
dam and furnishes the power for the privilege of obstructing a navigable
stream, gives this company free of charge the full amount of betterment which
may accrue from the improvement of conditions on the upper waters; and other
companies are already endeavoring to get into similar favorable positions at
Bee Tree and Muscle Shoals. On the Cumberland another concern has already been
formed to secure the privilege of damming and using all the waters above the
present government dams, and we as a nation have taken no steps toward using
the power at the dams we own.

One of the most intricate problems involved, and one
which must be cleared before we have gone far with the management of water‑power,
is that of the ownership of running water, ‑ a matter to which both
Congress and the Supreme Court have given considerable time with very
inconclusive results. Under old conditions, when the erection of a dam was the
whole apparatus of power‑development, the man who owned the dam site was
considered by that possession to own the power in the water during the time it
was passing his land. When water‑power was the only power, and larger
development was necessary, this dam‑owner was given the right to take for
flowage the lands of his immediate neighbors, for a fair price. But now that we
have passed far beyond that stage, to a time when the improvement of a river
begins at the fountain from which it springs and in the forests which cover the
slopes of the surrounding hills, we can no longer follow this old procedure.

The work which is done at headwaters actually creates
a power, since it enlarges and steadies the flow; and that power is possible of
utilization over and over again, for every foot of fall from the fountain to
the sea. The Supreme Court has often held that the government has but a
navigation right in streams, and that the states themselves own the water, and
the land‑owners the use for power. But old usage must give way to new
needs, and a new body of law describing and establishing the owner‑ship and
the extent of the several rights in a river is one of the urgent needs of the
new movement.

In an earlier article in the Atlantic the present writer called attention to the need of a
national Department of Public Works which should have charge, among other
things, of the control of our rivers and harbors. It must in the long run be
through such a department that all these methods of conservation are
correlated. If it should come to be established, it would require sufficient
power to enable its directors to cooperate readily and of their own volition
with the authorities of the states within which they were working, and even
with individuals and corporations. It must be able to follow out the suggestion
made by President Roosevelt at Memphis, where he begged the assembled
Southerners to see to it that this question of conservation was kept above
party politics, and was carried on without regard to the change of
administration or of party at Washington. It must be able to plan for years
ahead and to enter into comprehensive plans for systematic work.

We are accustomed to think and to speak of America as
a land of unlimited resources. Suddenly we are confronted with the appalling
fact that these resources are, in fact, very limited, and that the limit is in
sight. Yet this is but our own misunderstanding. The real resources of America
lie in the intelligence and ability to cooperate, which its people have always
manifested, and with which they could make a habitable and delightful region of
the Sahara itself. It this resource, most of all, which we must conserve and
which we must cultivate; and if the President shall by his present conference
succeed in drawing us into a movement for that purpose above the plane of party
politics, if he shall have led us into a business—like association which
will enable us hereafter to live upon the interest from our fortune, and no
longer to impair the principal, he will have established his largest claim upon
the graitude and the memory of our people.

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Writing used to be a solitary profession. How did it become so interminably social?

Whether we’re behind the podium or awaiting our turn, numbing our bottoms on the chill of metal foldout chairs or trying to work some life into our terror-stricken tongues, we introverts feel the pain of the public performance. This is because there are requirements to being a writer. Other than being a writer, I mean. Firstly, there’s the need to become part of the writing “community”, which compels every writer who craves self respect and success to attend community events, help to organize them, buzz over them, and—despite blitzed nerves and staggering bowels—present and perform at them. We get through it. We bully ourselves into it. We dose ourselves with beta blockers. We drink. We become our own worst enemies for a night of validation and participation.

Even when a dentist kills an adored lion, and everyone is furious, there’s loftier righteousness to be had.

Now is the point in the story of Cecil the lion—amid non-stop news coverage and passionate social-media advocacy—when people get tired of hearing about Cecil the lion. Even if they hesitate to say it.

But Cecil fatigue is only going to get worse. On Friday morning, Zimbabwe’s environment minister, Oppah Muchinguri, called for the extradition of the man who killed him, the Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer. Muchinguri would like Palmer to be “held accountable for his illegal action”—paying a reported $50,000 to kill Cecil with an arrow after luring him away from protected land. And she’s far from alone in demanding accountability. This week, the Internet has served as a bastion of judgment and vigilante justice—just like usual, except that this was a perfect storm directed at a single person. It might be called an outrage singularity.

Most of the big names in futurism are men. What does that mean for the direction we’re all headed?

In the future, everyone’s going to have a robot assistant. That’s the story, at least. And as part of that long-running narrative, Facebook just launched its virtual assistant. They’re calling it Moneypenny—the secretary from the James Bond Films. Which means the symbol of our march forward, once again, ends up being a nod back. In this case, Moneypenny is a send-up to an age when Bond’s womanizing was a symbol of manliness and many women were, no matter what they wanted to be doing, secretaries.

Why can’t people imagine a future without falling into the sexist past? Why does the road ahead keep leading us back to a place that looks like the Tomorrowland of the 1950s? Well, when it comes to Moneypenny, here’s a relevant datapoint: More than two thirds of Facebook employees are men. That’s a ratio reflected among another key group: futurists.

Forget credit hours—in a quest to cut costs, universities are simply asking students to prove their mastery of a subject.

MANCHESTER, Mich.—Had Daniella Kippnick followed in the footsteps of the hundreds of millions of students who have earned university degrees in the past millennium, she might be slumping in a lecture hall somewhere while a professor droned. But Kippnick has no course lectures. She has no courses to attend at all. No classroom, no college quad, no grades. Her university has no deadlines or tenure-track professors.

Instead, Kippnick makes her way through different subject matters on the way to a bachelor’s in accounting. When she feels she’s mastered a certain subject, she takes a test at home, where a proctor watches her from afar by monitoring her computer and watching her over a video feed. If she proves she’s competent—by getting the equivalent of a B—she passes and moves on to the next subject.

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

And if thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the LORD thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing today.

— Deuteronomy 15: 12–15

Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other man receives damage by his transgression: in which case he who hath received any damage, has, besides the right of punishment common to him with other men, a particular right to seek reparation.

Even when they’re adopted, the children of the wealthy grow up to be just as well-off as their parents.

Lately, it seems that every new study about social mobility further corrodes the story Americans tell themselves about meritocracy; each one provides more evidence that comfortable lives are reserved for the winners of what sociologists call the birth lottery. But, recently, there have been suggestions that the birth lottery’s outcomes can be manipulated even after the fluttering ping-pong balls of inequality have been drawn.

What appears to matter—a lot—is environment, and that’s something that can be controlled. For example, one study out of Harvard found that moving poor families into better neighborhoods greatly increased the chances that children would escape poverty when they grew up.

While it’s well documentedthat the children of the wealthy tend to grow up to be wealthy, researchers are still at work on how and why that happens. Perhaps they grow up to be rich because they genetically inherit certain skills and preferences, such as a tendency to tuck away money into savings. Or perhaps it’s mostly because wealthier parents invest more in their children’s education and help them get well-paid jobs. Is it more nature, or more nurture?

The Wall Street Journal’s eyebrow-raising story of how the presidential candidate and her husband accepted cash from UBS without any regard for the appearance of impropriety that it created.

The Swiss bank UBS is one of the biggest, most powerful financial institutions in the world. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton intervened to help it out with the IRS. And after that, the Swiss bank paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for speaking gigs. TheWall Street Journal reported all that and more Thursday in an article that highlights huge conflicts of interest that the Clintons have created in the recent past.

The piece begins by detailing how Clinton helped the global bank.

“A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts,” the newspaper reports. “If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court. Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS.”

During the multi-country press tour for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, not even Jon Stewart has dared ask Tom Cruise about Scientology.

During the media blitz for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation over the past two weeks, Tom Cruise has seemingly been everywhere. In London, he participated in a live interview at the British Film Institute with the presenter Alex Zane, the movie’s director, Christopher McQuarrie, and a handful of his fellow cast members. In New York, he faced off with Jimmy Fallon in a lip-sync battle on The Tonight Show and attended the Monday night premiere in Times Square. And, on Tuesday afternoon, the actor recorded an appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where he discussed his exercise regimen, the importance of a healthy diet, and how he still has all his own hair at 53.

Stewart, who during his career has won two Peabody Awards for public service and the Orwell Award for “distinguished contribution to honesty and clarity in public language,” represented the most challenging interviewer Cruise has faced on the tour, during a challenging year for the actor. In April, HBO broadcast Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear, a film based on the book of the same title by Lawrence Wright exploring the Church of Scientology, of which Cruise is a high-profile member. The movie alleges, among other things, that the actor personally profited from slave labor (church members who were paid 40 cents an hour to outfit the star’s airplane hangar and motorcycle), and that his former girlfriend, the actress Nazanin Boniadi, was punished by the Church by being forced to do menial work after telling a friend about her relationship troubles with Cruise. For Cruise “not to address the allegations of abuse,” Gibney said in January, “seems to me palpably irresponsible.” But in The Daily Show interview, as with all of Cruise’s other appearances, Scientology wasn’t mentioned.

Some say the so-called sharing economy has gotten away from its central premise—sharing.

This past March, in an up-and-coming neighborhood of Portland, Maine, a group of residents rented a warehouse and opened a tool-lending library. The idea was to give locals access to everyday but expensive garage, kitchen, and landscaping tools—such as chainsaws, lawnmowers, wheelbarrows, a giant cider press, and soap molds—to save unnecessary expense as well as clutter in closets and tool sheds.

The residents had been inspired by similar tool-lending libraries across the country—in Columbus, Ohio; in Seattle, Washington; in Portland, Oregon. The ethos made sense to the Mainers. “We all have day jobs working to make a more sustainable world,” says Hazel Onsrud, one of the Maine Tool Library’s founders, who works in renewable energy. “I do not want to buy all of that stuff.”

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

What is the Islamic State?

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.